Curriculum Choices Part 1

In an earlier post I said that I would share some of our curriculum choices for this year, so here it is as promised. We are really excited to dive into our studies for this year. I have been researching and budgeting for months. Jeff, the official principal of our home school, has been an amazing sounding board through these months of research, helping me work through each of the choices and the different learning styles of our children. The education of our children is a top priority in our home. Together we are thrilled with our choices.

In these early years the Three R's of course are the meat and potatoes of school, but boy are the gravy and dessert electives fun too! So, I will start off with our meat and potato choices.

For Math we will be trying out a program called Math U See.


 

We used a combination of Singapore and Horizons math last year with lots of manipulatives, but it continues to be a difficult subject for both of the boys. Math U See is manipulative based, and has a short DVD segment for each lesson. I usually would be less inclined to have someone else "teaching" for me, but I think in this case it might be better for the boys to have the initial ideas presented via video with Mommy as the back up encourager and instructor. Plus, it will be at least one subject that is not so Mommy time intensive requiring one-on-one instruction.  I thought last year that having the boys do the same thing would cut down on our time, but it does not. The boys both need so much one-on-one at this age!

Language Arts is of course a huge portion of our schooling for first grade. We will be continuing with much of what we started last year.

We started last year with a program called the Primary Arts of Language Reading and Writing (PAL).


This program comes from the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). IEW primarily teaches writing, specifically for 3rd grade and up. It is what we intend on using in the future. The PAL program, however is a complete Language Arts program for K-2 grade. We will be using it for K-1st grade. It is a unique program that uses the blended sight and sound methods of teaching reading and writing. It is a gentle yet very fun introduction to language arts with lots of games and hands on applications. It also lays baby step foundations in writing the "IEW" way that will be used in the future.

Scheduled into the PAL program is a separate spelling program called All About Spelling. We did not get to start this last year, and are very excited to begin this year. AAS looks like a lot of fun. It is a multi-sensory method of learning spelling that will be especially beneficial for my kinesthetic learner. (I will let you guess which one that is!! :))




The only "workbook" that we will add to our language arts is the Explode the Code workbooks. These are phonics workbooks that are the best I have found. The predictable repetition of these workbooks has really helped to cement phonics rules and concepts for the boys above and beyond their PAL work. The boys will be finishing up book 3 of the 1st grade work and moving into books 4-6 of the 2nd grade work as they are ready. This workbook is generally their school work that I set out in the AM for them to do when they wake up. They can work on it independently and usually are assigned 1-2 pages per morning. We review and go over corrections after breakfast.



For reading practice we will be combining Bob books, Sonlight 1st Grade readers, and a variety of other books from our home library and local library.

So there you have it. Our meat and potatoes for 2012-13. Coming in the next post.....the gravy and dessert!

Liebster Award

 

Our blog was honored with the Liebster Award by my sweet friend Tara! Tara's blog says that Liebster is a German term for "sweet, kind, nice, pleasant, endearing, valued, dearest, beloved, cute" and it's an award given to bloggers with less than 200 followers who meet these characteristics. (Thank you Tara for thinking of us!) In the process, bloggers are able to show their appreciation to each other, while giving them an opportunity to tell a little more about themselves, to discover other bloggers that their readers might be interested in following, and to nominate other blogs that they love.

My instructions were to answer 11 questions given by Tara, along with adding 11 random things about myself. Then I get to nominate a few blogs and ask 11 questions of them!

 Here are Tara's 11 questions for me:

1. What made you start blogging?

When we chose to start our family with the adoption of Luke and Ben it was hard to keep everyone updated via email. So, we started a blog to keep friends and family posted on our adoption happenings, and now it has stuck and followed our family beyond our adoption.

2. How did you meet your husband?

We both received letters from the church we attended inviting us to a college and career Sunday school class they were starting up. We sat next to each other that first Sunday, became friends in a group first, started dating four months later, were engaged 11 months after meeting, and married 15 months after meeting!

3. What is one thing on your "bucket list?"

The book of James is my favorite in the Bible and I have always wanted to memorize it. I am just about to start a study in James by Beth Moore and she encourages you to memorize the entire book. I am a little nervous to start at this busy stage of my life, but I think this study might help me on this item on my list.

I also want to visit every continent (besides Antarctica) so I still need to visit South America and Australia.

4. What is your favorite childhood memory?

Playing "orphans" outside in our backyard and making Christmas cookies with my Grammy,

5. If you could be a superhero, what superpower would you want to have?

I think I need to be spiderwomen with AT LEAST 8 arms/hands to get my to-do lists done!

6. What is your most prized possession?

Our backup hard-drive that has all of our pictures on it, wedding ring, and my thimble collection from all the places I have visited.

7. What is the most random thing you have in your closet right now?

My In-Laws (who I love and have an amazing relationship with) somehow have decided it is hillarious to give my hubby "pooping" jellybean dispensing animals for all holiday occasions. How they find so many new ones is beyond me. My hubby thinks they are funny and refuses to get rid of them. I refuse to let them come out of our closet. We are at a stand-still on the topic! :) Some of them even make noise and scare me to death when I move something in the closet and forget they are there.

8. What is your favorite movie?

Gone with the Wind and The Power of One

9. What is something that you have a hard time saying "no" to?

New books for my kids

10. If you could have lunch with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?

My sister Kamie. Outside of my Hubby she is my best friend. We have now lived apart for more than 15 years and it is so hard to get "sister" time, especially with growing families for both of us. 

11. What would you consider your "dream job?"

Although the most difficult job I could have imagined, I have my dream job now. Taking care of my family, helping raise and teach my children and still occasionally getting to serve as a nurse (which I still love).

Now for 11 random things about myself:

1. I have a ridiculous and somewhat unfounded fear of Ostriches. It gives me the heebie jeebies just to type it.

2. My favorite food is Sushi.

3.  I knew I was going to adopt, be a nurse, have at least five kids, and have a son named Luke since I was VERY young. I also was sure I would have a lot of girls.....but I got that one wrong!

4. I love pistachios and detest all forms of beans (except for green, they are good!)

5. I don't keep in touch with a lot of my college friends because at one point in my life I was given an amazing and prestigious scholarship to school as one of 20 top high school graduates in my state. My friends on the same scholarship are now all famous or curing cancer. I feel like none of them would be able to appreciate where and why God has me where I am now. (Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change my family for ANYTHING, it just makes me not eager to keep in touch and always feel like I need to compare.)

6. I don't have a facebook account and don't plan on getting one anytime soon. (Who has the time to keep up with facebook and a blog?)

7. My sister Kamie and I backpacked across Europe after I graduated from college. We made a great team. She is gifted in languages I am a pretty decent navigator. We didn't visit all the usual tourist spots, but focused on WWI and WWII history- a common love between us. We walked for miles on the side of a highway in Luxembourg to visit General Patton's grave.

8. I have been to 28 different countries, none of them with the Air Force!

9. I tried dance lessons for one year when I was young. I did not like it and despite all attempts at a bribe, refused to go on stage for the recital. That was the end of my dancing career. Although I did love to swing dance when I was in college.

10. I still have several foods that I cannot eat after my first pregnancy with Gracie due to such severe morning sickness.

11. I have two middle names (given to me at birth!) and people are always trying to hyphenate my second middle name (which happens to be my Mother's maiden name) with my last name. It drives me crazy when they don't believe me (like at a DMV or the hospital).

Here are some of my favorite blogs I read that I would like to nominate for the Liebster Award:

Meyer Family Updates

Turley Family Updates 

Life As We Know It

My questions for you are:

1. If you could take your family on a vacation this year (no cost prohibiting) where would it be?

2. What is your favorite summer olympic sport?

3. What is your favorite childhood memory?

4. What is your favorite verse in the Bible?

5. What is one thing on your "bucket list"?

6. What is one area of cleaning or housework you detest the most?

7. What would be one thing from your "dream house" that you would add first to you current home?

8. What is your beverage of choice at a restaurant?

9. What is one thing you hope to teach your children?

10. What is your favorite instant movie or show on Netflix?

11.What is your all time favorite go-to dinner recipe?

I can't wait to read your responses! Have fun! Your instructions are the same as mine, you are just not allowed to tag someone who nominated your blog!

Answer to Prayer Cousins

While they are not officially family, our good friends Andy and Emily are considered family. We have prayed for such a long time for their twin girls who were born at 31 weeks in June after eight weeks of bedrest. Since the kids were obviously not old enough to visit the girls in the NICU, they have anxiously been waiting for them to come home from the hospital. Last week they finally got to meet their newest "NC cousins". It was love at first sight!

We think most of Gracie's baby dolls are bigger than these precious girls! Gracie asks about them non stop and would take them home with us if she could.

Both Luke and Ben are amazing prayer warriors. They humble us on a daily basis in how they NEVER forget to pray for people they love. They pray every night for these two sweet girls and never forget to pray for their cousin baby Nate in Arizona.

Jacob is a bit too little to hold them, but he desperately wanted to be as close as possible to the babies!

The girls were both born on the day we had planned a baby shower for Emily. So, instead we were able to celebrate with Avery and Rebekah at the shower! Gracie joined me at the shower and had fun going to a "girl party".

Luke's artwork

Until recently Luke and Ben did not really have any interest in coloring or drawing a whole lot. They have always had the supplies, but would rather be playing or reading. Well, I have recently had to stock up on the back to school 17 cent spiral notebooks at Walmart due to the fact that Luke is drawing all the time!! Here are just a few of my favorites! :)

Luke's title for this one is: Luke the Gardner (complete with green overalls because "that's what gardeners wear!")

This is my favorite. Luke called it "A Fall Day" I think he likes abstract art. :)

Yes, this "Ocean Life" picture would not be complete without Anemones.... :)

It's starting to look a lot like school time!

Okay, I know it is early for school. We have had a fun summer break. We have continued our reading and math over the summer at a laid back pace, but we are ready to start again. The plan is to start early (the first week of August) so that we can take as long of a break as we need in the fall!

I have been busy with all of my teacher preparation. I never had any desire to be a teacher, but I sure do love planning and preparing for my own kids! I am so excited about all we have planned for this year. Maybe in another post I will share our curriculum choices and extras for first grade.

This year I decided to add something new to our morning school routine. I am really excited about the way it turned out so I thought I would share! Last year the boys had their own calendars to color, but I wanted to have something that was more visual and included more items for our morning.

Due to the fact that we have absolutely no space for a school room, or even a wall, I created a morning calendar board on a tri-fold poster board I got at Walmart. All the other items I had on hand or found in the dollar bins at Target. Last year I got a laminating machine for my birthday. Yes, I am a homeschooling Mama nerd who LOVES my laminating machine! All the items are laminated to survive multiple little hands. Small clips, Velcro dots, or key rings attach everything to the adhesive hooks on the board so we can easily switch everything out to suit our needs. When we are done, it will be folded up and tucked behind a bookshelf out of reach of little hands!
 

Here are the items I decided to include in our board. Lest you think I am too creative :) all of these printables I found online through various homeschool blogs. I have listed all the links at bottom of the post. These Moms are amazing and willing to share all their hard work! I just tweaked their ideas to fit our needs.

On the left side of the board we have:
Daily Prayer Focus Items
Our Food for the Hungry children we sponsor
Missionary Family of the week
and Godly Character Traits (there are a total of 26, I am not sure yet if we will focus on one per week, or rotate every day to get more exposure to the traits.)
We will also add our Bible verse for the week to our morning routine.

In the middle of the board we included:

Books of the Bible, Old and New Testament
Letter/Color/Number/Shape of the Week
Weather/ Season
Skip Counting
Make the Date with coins
and 100's chart

While some of these items are just for review for the boys, I included them so Gracie and Jacob could be a part of morning school time too!

 On the right side:
Today's Temperature
What Time is it?
and Days in School (with focus on place value for numbers).

On the top is the day of the week and date. On the very bottom I attached a pencil case that holds mini dry erase markers and our extra board pieces. In order to keep the pieces not all mixed up, I made laminated sheets of card stock paper with Velcro dots, so all the pieces are sorted and stored, ready to find quickly.

Here is a list of the amazing blogs with all of these ideas. These blogs have so much information I can easily get overwhelmed and feel like a homeschool failure. I honestly don't know where these Mom's find the time! They have so many great resources- for free! Check them out if you have time, but don't get overwhelmed!!!

Homeschool Creations
Godly Character Traits
1plus1plus1equals1
Confessions of a Homeschooler

Summer School.....Plan B

Last summer we did a unit study on ants, and had so much fun learning. Well, the plan for this summer was to study caterpillars and butterflies. We postponed ordering the live larvae so that they would not arrive, or change into butterflies, while we were on vacation. Well, our larvae arrived and we were so excited! Turned out they were all dead, most likely due to the severe heat across the nation, the mail trip was just too much. We called the company for replacement larvae, and they said they have stopped all shipments due to the extreme heat and they would send them to us in the fall!!! We are all so disappointed, so plan B is finishing our butterfly study in the fall. Maybe when we are taking a fall break for our baby brother to be born!

Here is just a cute story I had to share. The day after the larvae arrived I came downstairs to find this:

Without prompting, the kids had found our magnifying glass, ruler, and journal paper and pencils. When I asked Luke what he was doing, he said he was "writing down his observations!" He had written out careful notes in almost perfect handwriting and spelling about when and what they eat, and drawn a picture with measurements. Too cute! See I told you he was our little scientist! Unfortunately a few days later, our observations came to the sad conclusion that the caterpillars were indeed dead.

Gracie, decided to pretend she was a caterpillar, attaching herself to the butterfly habitat to create its chrysalis. So, we did enjoy our very short lived summer school. We will enjoy it even more with live caterpillars in the fall when we can finish our study! Stay tuned!

Gracie- 2 1/2 (also belated)

Here is another belated post....Gracie's 2 1/2 year update! This daughter of ours is just so much fun to watch learn and grow. She can make us laugh out loud and bring us to exasperation within the same moments. She is growing so quickly it is hard to keep up. It really is striking how different little girls are from day one than boys. Her range of emotions and our job to help her learn how to best deal with them is whole new territory for this boy filled home.

Gracie is, and always will be, a talker. Her grasp of language and clarity of speech is way beyond her years. She often tells strangers that she is five. They look at me funny because part of them believes it the way she speaks....but then her tiny body does not match her language ability!

Gracie has had baby dolls since her 1st birthday, but has hit a total baby doll stage. She will play with her dolls from morning until night. Dictating tasks to her three brothers to go along with her imaginative play. 

Gracie has now fully adjusted to her big girl bed. She "usually" does a pretty good job of not waking up Jacob in the morning or at naps. She will pick out an outfit for herself and change before I even wake up. (It always matches and coordinates too! She will often pick out an outfit for Jacob as well).

We knew it was time to potty train when I would wake up in the morning and she had changed her own diaper!!! Yes, perfectly done like a pro! The next day we put her in underwear and she has not turned back. She is completely potty trained during the day; next step....night time! Thank goodness we will not be buying diapers for three in the fall! I must say, waiting until she was completely ready was so worth the extra months of diapers. No stress potty training at its best.

Gracie is absolutely adored by her brothers, and she adores them all right back. It is so fun to watch such a special bond develop between she and her brothers. They are her biggest fans and she is their biggest cheerleader. Luke and Ben often call her "sweetie" and Jacob calls her "Sis" or "Sissy". They also know just how to push her buttons and get her riled up of course! She is fiercely protective of them, and they of her. The other day we had a family conversation about how to respond to people who ask rude comments about our family, or stare. When we asked the kids how we should respond if someone makes a rude comment about how our children do not match skin color, Gracie responded, "I know, I will just stinker at them!" We all about fell over in laughter. Not exactly the answer we were looking for, but a good one none the less.

Gracie continues to be a challenge when it comes to meals. One day it seems as if she does not eat enough to survive, and the next she eats more. She is not a picky eater. Her favorite foods are broccoli and green beans, and she loves a huge variety of foods, but some days it seems as if she just can't be bothered to eat. The real challenge is actually getting her to eat any bread or sometimes protein. The other day I actually said something I never thought would come out of a parent's mouth. I said "Gracie eat a chicken nugget and then you can have more broccoli!"

Gracie loves being a part of "school" and will beg for her own school time. She is doing amazing and shocks me with how much she remembers. She has also taken it upon herself to teach Jacob all of his colors and how to do puzzles.

Gracie will be turning three the month after baby #5 is born, so hopefully that update won't be too far belated!

Random Summer Pictures

Just wanted to post a few fun summer photos. Mostly we have been trying to beat the heat. Jacob is finally old enough, with supervision, to play with play-dough with the older kids. He loves it, and actually does a decent job keeping it out of his mouth. For July we made red play-dough with blue sparkles.

 Just chilling with my Daddy.

Our Summer Beach Babies.

"Gracie stop hugging me, I am trying to read here!!"

I forgot to post this earlier. Gracie is absolutely in love with her Aunt Gentry. She talks about her all the time! Maybe it has something to do with Aunt Gentry being a ballerina??

Playing outside: We have a small pool and a really fun water table outside. We love playing in water!

Hope you are having a fun summer too!

Look who's walking! (Belated 15 month post!)

With vacations and all of our other busy summer activities, I am behind on Jacob's 15 month post! At his last well baby check up he measured in at 23 pounds and 31.5 inches! (Roughly 50% in both categories) Jacob is starting to walk, and has taken as many as 10-12 steps, but still prefers to chase after his siblings by crawling since it is much faster! He loves to hold his siblings hands to walk. He also loves trying to escape up the stairs to our second floor. He can climb the stairs in what seems like two seconds flat if we don't have the baby gate closed.

He is trying to talk up a storm and consistently uses about a dozen words. He calls Luke "Gook", Ben is his easy name, and Grace he calls "Sis". Mama, Dada, down, NO!, shoes, trash, snack, cup, milk, more, stop, ball, and please area few of his other favorite words.

Jacob is a phenomenal sleeper! He usually takes a 3-4 hour nap in the afternoon and then sleeps from about 7:30 PM to 7:30 or 8 AM if his big sister doesn't wake him up too early! He loves giving kisses and hugs and reading books. He loves playing cars with his brothers and baby dolls with his sister. Jacob is a great eater as well, and will eat just about anything. His current favorite foods are chicken, rice, pasta, salad, cucumbers, carrots, apples, blueberries, and raspberries. Jacob is a complete charmer, and can get just about any random stranger to smile. When he sleeps or is just relaxing he always puts his hand behind his head and looks like a little man! Happy 15 months sweet Jacob!

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High Country Vacation- Grandfather Mountain

This is our last vacation blog post, I promise! One of the days on our trip we were able to visit and explore Grandfather Mountain. What an amazingly beautiful creation of God! The scenery was breathtaking! With little ones in tow, we did not hike the trails, but enjoyed the car ride to the top with lots of scenic places to explore on the way up.

In the natural habitat exhibits the kids were able to view a black bear, deer, and cougars!

The swinging mile high bridge was especially fun with a huge storm coming our direction!

We had a lot of fun and memory building on this trip. We were all worn out, but grateful for the time away as a family.